Onça vs Animal: Força contra Sabedoria

What does “amigo da onça” mean in Portuguese?

Onça is the jaguar, Brazil’s big spotted cat. It also lives in one of the country’s best known expressions: an amigo da onça is a so-called friend who drops you in it, the one who mentions your ex at your wedding. The phrase was made famous by a cartoon character of that name, drawn by Péricles in the magazine O Cruzeiro from 1943.

The jaguar is also on the R$50 banknote, so in slang uma onça can mean fifty reais. In the clip a narrator watches a jaguar lose a cub to a smaller animal that hides it under its body, and calls it a força contra a sabedoria, “strength against wisdom.” Its full name, onça-pintada, means “spotted jaguar.”